Versione in italiano QUI
Foreword
One minute. That is all the time I had, and it is the longest minute of my life. It is not a question of whether the photo worked or not: it is the road that took me there.
This is the story of that minute, and of all the other minutes that led me to it.
So this will not be a purely technical article, but the story of a journey and of emotions, told the way I would tell it to my friends at the bar.
If you feel like listening, make yourself comfortable and pour yourself a good glass of wine, and like every film, let us start with a teaser.
Trailer of “The Impossible Eclipse”
Oh, in the article you will also find a few musical suggestions… after all, there is no story and no good film without a proper soundtrack!
This is the full playlist:
Prologue
On the radio: “The Hard Interchange” by CHAMPS
May 2025, PhotoPills Camp. It is the last day and, as always, that means a boat trip around the island with more Pomada (the typical Menorcan drink) than cameras in our hands. We chat, we joke, we dream big, and someone starts talking about the photographic event of 2026: the total eclipse that will mainly involve Iceland and Spain.
I follow the conversation with a certain detachment: as beautiful as it may be, an eclipse is generally not an event suited to my photographic style, made of wide angles and long exposures.
At some point, though, things get interesting, because someone starts explaining that in Menorca, exactly where we are right now, totality will happen at around two degrees of elevation above the horizon, so more or less at sunset. In an instant my interest is at its maximum and my head starts running wild.
It takes very little for me to start dreaming of a beautiful seascape with an eclipse at sunset, maybe with a lighthouse in the composition.
So we start playing with PhotoPills, but it soon becomes obvious that, as ideal as Menorca is as a photographic destination, there is no shooting solution from land with a lighthouse in the frame.
In an instant, certainly helped by a questionable level of sobriety, Albert Dros and I look each other in the eye and think exactly the same thing: “Who ever said it has to be a photo from land?”
And that is how what is, to this day, certainly the most incredible photographic adventure of my life began.
Albert and I at the PhotoPills Camp
Menorca and its lighthouses
On the radio: “Diamond Veins” by French 79, Sarah Rebecca
On the island of Menorca there are five lighthouses worthy of the name. After some thinking, it is immediately clear that only three lend themselves to the mission: Artrutx, Favaritx and Cavalleria.
If you position yourself properly at sea, you can in fact fit both the eclipse and the lighthouse into the composition, perhaps stacked exactly one above the other: certainly a unique shot, never taken before.
Even though Favaritx looks like the obvious choice (being the most popular lighthouse on the island), my interest turns to Artrutx. It is hard to explain, and probably ridiculous to read, but the reality is that it is as if I could feel Artrutx calling me to it, and so, without any hesitation, I made an appointment with it for August 2026.
It is clear, though, that a photo like this cannot be the result of chance: the planning and the technical preparation ahead will be anything but simple.
The five lighthouses worthy of the name in Menorca
Calculating the position
On the radio: “Down Under” by Men at Work
Once it was established that the mission would be to try to photograph the moment of totality of the eclipse above the lighthouse, the first task is to work out where to position myself.
From a theoretical point of view the whole thing seems simple: if I want the sun aligned with the lighthouse, I have to place myself on the line that passes through the lighthouse in the direction opposite the sun. So far it is high school geometry.
The problem is that this line does not give me a point, it gives me a road. At every point along it the sun and the lighthouse stay aligned laterally, but two things change at the same time, and they change in opposite directions. The further away I go, the smaller the lighthouse becomes, so the sun climbs above its tip. The further away I go, the bigger the sun becomes in proportion to the lighthouse. Moving closer, the exact opposite happens.
So I do not have to find a direction: I have to find a distance.
There is only one point where the shot can work
The problems, already at this stage, are many.
The first is that the exact calculation is anything but trivial: luckily PhotoPills comes to the rescue. Not only can I already start working out the point with the available version, but thanks to lead developer German the development of an accurate 3D previsualisation system gets accelerated, and it lets me understand exactly where to be to get the shot I want. Fantastic: now I know where I will have to stand, and I can somehow previsualise the composition. Even if, looking at it, I already sense that it will not be that simple.
The first thing to evaluate is the relative size of the sun compared to the lighthouse. At 1.5 km away the sun will have an apparent diameter of about 15 metres, according to the fool’s rule of thumb: ten metres for every kilometre of distance. Good, but not great. The sun will be big, not gigantic. Putting it behind the lighthouse is therefore not a valid option in my opinion, because it would cover too large a portion of it. I would need a sun of at least 25 metres, which means standing 2.5 km away, but at that distance the alignment during totality no longer holds. The only way is to stack them one above the other.
Which is also the most beautiful aesthetic choice and, not by chance, the most difficult one. If the sun went behind the lighthouse, I would only need to be precise laterally: any point on the line would do, and I could forget about height. Wanting it above, instead, I no longer have a road to move along. I have a single point, and I have to be there.
I start sweating. This is turning into a precision shot from a roller coaster.
The crazy plan
The gear
On the radio: “STORM II” by GENER8ION, Yung Lean
You do not go and take the shot of your life with a phone. Or rather, nothing against phones, mind you, but if you want to get on a boat in the middle of the sea off a Mediterranean island for one single damned minute of usable time, you probably need something better suited to the purpose. After all, I do not think (I hope) that anyone has ever thought of going to the moon on a bicycle.
I look inside my gear cabinet and my Fujifilm GFX 100S looks at me the way the vegetables look at me from the fridge when I open it to grab a Coke after ordering a pizza. RAW files of 200 MB and “bursts” of 5 frames: I am sorry my friend, but life is a soup and you are a fork.
So I get the idea of contacting my friends at Canon, with whom I have had the pleasure and the honour of working for a long time, both for field courses and for the wonderful world of printing. It is hard to pitch a project like this, so all I manage is a presentation that sounds more or less like “Hey, I have a shot in mind that realistically has a 1% chance of succeeding, what do you say?”
They have real adventure in their DNA, and you can tell from what they put at my disposal: literally everything I ask for.
Again from the calculations made with PhotoPills, I believe I will be shooting between 300mm and 500mm, and I will need something brutally fast and reliable. So this is what arrives for the project:
- Canon EOS R5 Mark II
- Canon EOS R5 Mark I (backup body)
- Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM
- Canon Extender RF 1.4x
For those who do not know it, the R5 Mark II allows bursts of 30 frames per second, shutter speeds up to 1/32000, ISO 51200 and an innovative autofocus system. We will talk about that later, in the part about shooting technique, but all of the above, combined with a 45 MP sensor, makes it the perfect tool to attempt the mission.
Canon gear for the mission
Another essential element is filters. Shooting an eclipse, even more so with a telephoto lens, requires proper protection of the sensor during all the partial phases, exactly as protection is essential for our eyes.
So NiSi arrives with its filters to give me all the protection and flexibility I need, with its JetMag Pro magnetic filter system. The Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM takes 77mm filters, so I choose the NiSi Solar Pro Nano UV/IR Cut ND100000 (5.0) 16.6 Stop solar filter in the JetMag Pro version.
I immediately sense, though, that the 16.6 stop NiSi Solar Pro filter might be too dense: that filter was designed for an eclipse high in the sky, while mine will basically happen at sunset. So I decide to also get the NiSi JetMag Pro Landscape Kit, which contains the 3, 6 and 10 stop filters, which can be combined together: truly perfect for maximum flexibility. Since these filters are FS (Full Spectrum, meaning they do not filter UV and IR), it becomes absolutely essential to also get the NiSi JetMag Pro UV/IR filter. (Remember that it is ESSENTIAL to protect the sensor not only in the visible spectrum, but also from UV and IR wavelengths.)
I would say we have everything. All that is missing is learning how to use it all under pressure, given that our photography lives at the exact opposite end of this curve (low ISO, wide angle, long exposures and filters we know inside out).
Filters are ESSENTIAL: and with NiSi I have the best
Testing at sunrise
On the radio: “Where the waves fade” by pølaroit
The intensity of the light of an eclipse at sunset is quite a problem: while it is more or less well documented how to shoot one when it happens during the day, doing it with the sun that low on the horizon is not documented much, and doing it with the sun low and on a moving boat is something that, probably not by chance, has never been considered at all.
Some testing becomes essential, even if simulating an eclipse is definitely not the easiest kind of home experiment to replicate.
The most brilliant thing that comes to mind is to make the most of my own laziness and train with the sunrise that comes up comfortably in front of my balcony, simulating at least the partial phase with my neighbour’s chimney. After a few tests, the intuition proves correct: with the sun at around two degrees, in the partial phase or just before it, a 10 stop ND1000 filter is more than adequate. With the sun lower, so in the phase after totality, which I simulate with the earliest stages of sunrise, a 6 stop ND64 is the perfect density. For totality the filter question does not exist, since it has to be removed.
What remains is the shutter speed problem, because the camera will not be comfortably perched on a tripod doing its job while I drink a beer and enjoy the well known exposure tables. It will be in my hands the whole time, while I sit “comfortably” on some boat trying not to puke my guts out.
Improbable eclipse simulations at sunrise
The shooting technique
When it comes to solar eclipses, there is nobody more of an expert than my friend Antoni Cladera, cofounder of PhotoPills. When I explain the project to him he does not know whether to laugh or cry, but his advice is immediately invaluable.
Antoni agrees that the problem with shooting from the boat will be its oscillating movement, and he suggests the combination of two actions: high ISO and exposure bracketing.
It sounds reasonable to me, so I work out a plan for the different phases of the eclipse, making the most of what the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and the Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM can do.
I start reasoning, and the point I want to keep crystal clear in my head is that during totality I will not have time for refined thoughts. I will not have time to philosophise about the histogram or about which ISO and aperture ratio is more optimal. If it were a long exposure I could go by experience and instinct, but this is a zone of absolute discomfort for me. Too many variables, far too many. One minute, I have one damned minute, and however long it may sound here, I know for certain it will last the blink of an eye when I am out at sea. I have to simplify.
So I decide that, instead of constantly changing shutter speed and ISO for every phase of the eclipse, I will try to handle all the phases with fast bursts of 7 frames spaced 1 stop and 1/3 apart, starting from a fixed shutter speed and using ISO as the only variable. If I start from an adequate shutter speed, I can exploit what the R5 Mark II can do and sweep through the very fast speeds offered by the electronic shutter.
I choose 1/1000s as my base shutter speed, and I split the work into just two blocks: partial phases and totality. As for ISO, I calculate that ISO 200 should be fine for the partial phases, while for totality I will start from ISO 3200.
The idea is to simplify: fixed focal length, 7 frame exposure bracketing, and you work with ISO
I try to convince myself that it is a good plan, but deep down I already know that no battle plan survives the first cannon shot.
Menorca
On the radio: “Another Run Around the Sun” by Slumbernaut
It is 9 August and, after a leisurely three hours of delay, the landing gear of my plane finally touches the runway on the island.
Hot. Extremely humid.
I am tired, but a mix of restlessness and adrenaline starts taking control of me. Over the next few days I will learn to know this permanent condition and to live with it, but tonight I only want to become part of the island.
I barely have time to get off the plane before I arrange to meet Albert, and soon we find ourselves enjoying our beloved Pomada in a bar in Mahón that looks like it came straight out of a Manet painting, where we start comparing our plans and our shooting strategies. He will be at the Favaritx lighthouse, attempting the mission on eclipse day.
At some point he stops, looks at me seriously and tells me something that at the time sounds almost banal: “Set an alarm on your phone shortly before totality. We cannot know what our perception of time will be out there.” I nod, and we order another Pomada.
The Pomada Granisada alone is worth the trip 🙂
On the radio: “Riptide” by Vance Joy, FlicFlac
The days that follow are the best mental preparation for the shot I could ever have wished for. I get the chance to meet old friends who arranged to be on the island for this crazy adventure.
Josh Cripps is among them, and he is the third madman who will attempt this impossible shot with Albert and me. He will be at the Cavalleria lighthouse.
There is only one day left before my appointment with Artrutx, and we all meet with Rafa for the final briefing. Rafa not only made all of this possible thanks to PhotoPills, he also supported us with the entire logistics.
I meet Joan, the captain of my boat (which I discover is a sailing boat), and the whole team that will support me. It only takes a few minutes for the tension to melt away and leave room for the excitement of the adventure ahead.
Final briefing before the mission
Joan explains the route he will follow: it will take about an hour and a half of sailing to reach the coordinates I calculated. We will leave from the port of Ciutadella, and we will keep Cap d’Artrutx on our left.
We check the weather and it seems the gods are protecting us: the wind is expected from the northeast, so our position is sheltered by the island. Flat sea: this matters, because even in the right position, with a telephoto lens at that distance, a vertical oscillation would be introduced that I would not know how to handle right now. Zero clouds according to every weather model, and my trusty Clouds Horizon Distance gives us the green light too.
Our route towards the Artrutx lighthouse with Captain Joan
The strategy for the shot
On the radio: “Hvitserk’s Choice” by Trevor Morris
It is my turn, and I explain my exact plan to everyone. Specifically, I decide that I will use the first partial phase only for positioning and testing.
What does that mean? A total eclipse is basically made of three phases. The first is the initial partial phase, from the moment the moon starts covering the sun until the instant before totality. It is a very long phase, almost an hour. Then comes totality, which, as we said, lasts one minute. One single damned minute. Finally there is the second partial phase, which in theory also lasts about an hour, but for us it will be shorter, because the sun will set before that.
Exactly. I decide to spend that first hour only on being in the right place: I trust the calculations, but they need to be verified, and in the last part of the initial partial phase I have to put to the test all the assumptions about shutter speeds I made at my desk, and have the time to refine the strategy.
We all agree, and we arrange to meet the following afternoon at the port of Ciutadella to set sail around 17:00. The appointment with Artrutx is at 20:30:59… not a second earlier, not a minute later.
My debatable shooting strategy during the eclipse (photo: PhotoPills.com)
Eclipse day
On the radio: “Firøye” by pølaroit
No need for an alarm today, it is the tension that opens my eyes. I try to cool my thoughts down with a shower, and I arrange to meet Albert at our favourite bar for breakfast and for our goodbyes before the adventure.
We check the forecast a hundred times and it stays favourable, and we try to convince ourselves that everything will be fine.
My travel anxiety forces me to leave Mahón hours early towards Ciutadella, where I decide to have lunch. Between me and Artrutx there are only a few nautical miles, and only a few hours until the appointment. Space and time, which start to alter, just like my perception of things (and I swear it is not the wine’s fault!).
The meeting with Captain Joan and the rest of the team is at 17:00, and of course I am two hours early, which I spend in the cool of the car air conditioning listening to the most improbable playlists on Spotify. I feel the tension rising, but I do not try to fight it. I let it wrap around me, knowing that I cannot defeat it, but that in its own way it will try to help me. It will keep me awake, it will remind me not to take anything for granted, it will make me check the same things a hundred times.
Music and thoughts before setting sail
It is 17:00, time to meet. After a few pleasantries we go through the plan for the thousandth time and finally, after half an hour or so, we set sail. I am afraid to ask the captain for weather updates, so I do not ask.
We sail towards Artrutx, and it feels like an experience already lived in a thousand previous lives. The sea runs fast beneath us and on my right the surface is all silver reflections. I look at the full sails and for an hour I stop thinking about anything at all. That had not happened to me in months.
On the radio: “Grounded” by Jameson Nathan Jones
“Do not go gentle into that good night”
During the crossing, the first problem I had not thought about arrives: sea traffic. I see dozens of boats around us and a few mega yachts. Damn, how stupid of me not to think of it. Of course someone would want to watch the eclipse from the sea. I share my concerns with the team, but in the end we try to rationalise: what idiot would watch the eclipse from behind a headland that covers the sun instead of in front of it? Only me. And we keep sailing.
We finally round Cap d’Artrutx, and I can already feel that the sea is different. I look Captain Joan in the eye without speaking, because I already know he has understood what I am thinking. He shakes his head slightly, hesitates for a moment and says “not good”.
I go pale.
The wind has changed, and instead of blowing from the northeast it blows from the east: the island no longer protects us. Basically, the sea is not flat. Quite the opposite: there is a long swell.
On the radio: “Mountains” by Hans Zimmer
Long swell: panic.
This is a serious problem, for a couple of reasons. The first is technical: with a long swell, and me at 1.5 km with a telephoto lens, every attempt at shooting the lighthouse will throw me out of the composition. The oscillation is insane, and between one test frame and the next, as I try to understand the size of the problem, I see the lighthouse entering and leaving the frame completely.
The second, and much bigger one, is that I am starting to get seasick. And seasickness does not only rob me of my stomach: it robs me of my clarity. My body is busy feeding the fish instead of following the plan.
We have to get into position, there is no time to lose, but I cannot think clearly. The plan was to get onto the coordinates I had identified and then correct using my visual reading of the sun and of its expected path relative to the vertical axis of the lighthouse, so I could anticipate it. I cannot do it, or I manage only very roughly.
I look at my watch and see that time has flown… we are already deep into the partial phase and I do not know where we are.
I would not say panic sets in, but discouragement does. I have been preparing for this moment for a year, and my body abandons me exactly when I need it most. I would almost like to cry in a nervous breakdown, but at a certain point something unexpected happens.
From my pocket, my phone starts ringing nonstop. Albert’s alarm. Ten minutes to totality.
My eyes are closed, but I am smiling.
I feel as if someone had pressed the emergency button inside my brain. I open my eyes. The lighthouse swings in front of me, it enters and leaves the frame. It is there. It has been waiting for me for a year.
I cannot give up, I cannot do it now.
On the radio: “No Time for Caution” by Hans Zimmer
I look at Captain Joan and he smiles at me: he is an ace. Despite the swell, he has held the boat on my coordinates with almost absolute precision.
I immediately start checking our relative position: the calculations are good, we really are in the right place, or almost. Five minutes to go, and I feel there is nothing left in the world except me and Artrutx.
I guide Captain Joan with course corrections that bring us exactly where we need to be.
We are in an advanced partial phase… not long to go now
Here we are, we are entering totality. From this moment, I have one minute. One.
I start shooting and the strategy of simplifying proves me right, because of course everything is different from what I had imagined. ISO is not enough, I go up to 10000 (ten thousand!) and the R5 Mark II follows me. I feel it as a part of me. I know how to talk to it and it knows what to do without asking me questions.
The problems pile up: besides the exposure settings, I realise the swell keeps shifting the framing too much. Two frames out of seven are in, and that is not enough to be safe. On top of that, with this oscillation I cannot keep the focus on the lighthouse.
First I switch the autofocus of the R5 Mark II to Servo AF, and it locks onto the lighthouse like a sniper. Well done R5! Now let us deal with the oscillations, because either we solve this immediately or everything will have been pointless.
Luckily I have an intuition that turns out to be decisive: I raise the burst speed and try to anticipate the wave, realising that it is easier to shoot when the boat tilts downwards than when it tilts upwards (I still do not know why).
But the surprises are not over: clouds have arrived. At first I despair (and you can hear it in the video!), but then I understand they are a blessing, because they really let me give the eclipse my own vision.
I shoot.
The most surreal moment I have ever lived
The seconds pass and I see the cone of shadow about to end. We are almost at the end, and I have absolutely no idea whether I have a good frame in the camera, because I certainly did not have the time to look at the images.
I should use every second I have left, but I made myself a promise in front of the mirror before leaving: “Whatever happens, spend some time looking at the eclipse with your own eyes and not through the camera.”
Ten seconds left, maybe a little more.
I stop. I look at it.
I see the lighthouse with a sort of dark ball above it, surrounded by a halo of flames. I cannot describe it. It paralyses me.
I look around and everything is surreal: the silence, the darkness, the cold. For the first time I can see time: the cone of darkness that lasts exactly that one minute is there in front of me, like an hourglass draining. I see the light on its left and on its right.
It is beautiful. I do nothing else. I only realise I am crying afterwards.
On the radio: “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead
“The Longest Minute”
Canon EOS R5 Mark II, RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM
300mm, ISO 10000, f/7.1, 1/60
The minute is over, but the magic is not. The light makes its way through the darkness and the diamond ring appears, setting the surrounding clouds on fire. With Captain Joan the understanding is perfect by now, and with small instructions he manages to keep me exactly where I want to be.
I go back to shooting nonstop and, even though I still feel my body falling apart, there is not one part of it that is not trying to help me carry on at all costs.
On the radio: “Destroyers of Worlds” by Aaron Hibell
“Two Lights”
Canon EOS R5 Mark II, RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM
300mm, ISO 10000, f/7.1, 1/400
We are now in the second partial phase and the sun will soon say goodbye, setting right in front of us. I share the coordinates of the second shooting point I had planned, and within a few minutes we are there, taking the final frames.
After that, only darkness.
On the radio: “Looped” by Kiasmos
“Black Sun”
Canon EOS R5 Mark II, RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM
400mm, ISO 4000, f/7.1, 1/6400
Epilogue
On the radio: “Lune” by Tony Anderson
It is around 22:00 when we are about to enter the port of Ciutadella again.
I wake up lying on the deck, and I do not remember lying down.
As soon as I took the last frame, the seasickness took back everything I had taken from it, and my body simply pulled the plug.
In front of me I see Captain Joan smiling and announcing that we are about to arrive. I smile, and so does the whole team. I still do not know whether I have a good photo to publish. In fact, I should have downloaded the files, edited them and sent them to the various newsrooms as soon as I stopped shooting, but I remember that I could not even keep the laptop on my lap.
Who cares? What I lived through can never be described in words, and maybe not even with one of my images.
I remember that circle of fire, and when I close my eyes I see it in front of me straight away. We made it. And a year of tension dissolves without me having to do anything at all.
I look above me and see a fireball crossing the sky: the Perseids. It is the night of the peak, and I had not even thought about it. One minute for the eclipse, one second for a star. Everything that matters lasts very little: that is why it is worth going out to get it in the middle of the sea.
“Sol Lunae”
Canon EOS R5 Mark II, RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM
451mm, ISO 1000, f/7.1, 1/125
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On the radio: “Could Never Be Famous” by Louis Sévigny
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